The present invention relates to a monorail transport apparatus used primarily for automatically transporting golf equipment to its destination in golf links.
Recently, in golf links, reflecting the shortage of caddies, there has been employed a transport system comprising an elevated monorail laid in the compound of golf links and a transport apparatus which travels along said monorail for automatically transporting golf equipment to its destination. The conventional monorail transport apparatus of this type, however, encounters the problem of being lacking in its hill climbing ability when it approaches a slope of the monorail, since usually it is constructed to have two wheels, front and rear, on the vehicle body, having a very small area of contact with the monorail. Accordingly, rubber wheels are used as said two wheels and auxiliary wheels are provided which are pressed against the lower surface of the monorail to cooperate with the rubber wheels to hold the monorail therebetween while they are rolling on the monorail. Alternatively, a separate auxiliary rail is laid only in a slope rail region and it is toothed to form a rack while a pinion meshing therewith is provided on the vehicle body of the transport apparatus. Such measures are intended to increase the traveling force when the transport apparatus goes up a slope. However, in the former construction, the rubber wheels and the auxiliary wheels are independent of each other and individually contact the monorail, so that the area of contact increases simply in proportion to the number of wheels. Thus, with a small number of wheels it is impossible to greatly increase the area of contact. In the case of a transport apparatus according to the latter construction, the necessity of laying auxiliary rails corresponding to rail slope regions has the disadvantage of counterbalancing the inherent merits of a monorail transport system.